


Unified Field Theory

by melannen



Category: Stargate - All Series, Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Gen, Mad Science, Stargazing, Team, sga_flashfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-04-06
Updated: 2005-04-06
Packaged: 2017-10-04 03:38:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melannen/pseuds/melannen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John Sheppard leads a team.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unified Field Theory

**Author's Note:**

> Written in 38 min for the sga_flashfic 38 minutes challenge, so you'll forgive me for the scientific errors, right?
> 
> I'm sure Dr. McKay will. Eventually.

Ford settled his P90 over his knees, and looked at McKay, who'd leaned his head back against the stone wall and was staring up at the stars. "Does it make you feel small?"

McKay blinked. "Huh?"

"Seeing the stars like that. Even in Colorado there were never so many, and they're all different patterns, and it's so black, you know?" He gestured at the sky. "Stargazing like that, doesn't it make you think about how big the universe is, and how small we are, and how far away we've travelled?"

McKay sent him a withering look. "I'm an *astrophysicist*, Lieutenant. I know *precisely* how far we've travelled and what the relative sizes are. If I hadn't figured out how to handle scale, I wouldn't be getting much work done, would I?" He patted his pockets nervously. "Besides I wasn't stargazing, I was trying to check the stellar navigation system Zelenka and Miko are working on so that if we get lost through the stargate, we might have *some* chance of figuring out where in this--" he waved a hand about, lost for words-- "this *galaxy* we are."

"Oh," Ford said. He gazed up at the sky again. It was late spring in this village, and the stars twinkled a little in the warm breeze, in time with the sighing of the grain. "It makes me feel small. Sometimes I think it might be nice if it wasn't all so much bigger than we are."

McKay closed his eyes and took a deep breath. "There are very good physical reasons why living things are the size they are, Lieutenant, without invoking some sort of cosmic inferiority complex, but given your grasp of mathematics, maybe we should just be quiet and let me think about actual useful things, okay?"

"Falling," somebody said behind them. Ford and McKay looked up as Major Sheppard vaulted over the wall and slid down on the grass beside Ford.

"What?" McKay asked loudly.

"Teyla's off doing some diplomatic trading thing," Sheppard said, shrugging. "She told me usually only women are allowed in the government hut, but if I wanted to go through the special emasculation ceremony I could sit in and watch, so I told her I'd hang out with you guys until she was done."

"I don't *care* about your emasculation, what do you mean, *falling*?"

"Well," Sheppard said, picking a strand of grass and then dropping it, "You know, gravity."

McKay looked at Ford. "I think it's perfectly acceptable behavior to want an explanation if your one and only pilot suddenly interrupts your conversation saying things like 'falling' and 'gravity' right? I mean it wouldn't be unreasonable for me to find that slightly worrying?"

"Oh, were we having a conversation?" Ford said, grinning. "I didn't realize."

"No, I meant, scale," Sheppard said. "That's why I don't mind looking at the stars and feeling small. Because if you're the size of a star, the only force that can really affect you anymore is gravity. Right, McKay?"

"Well, yes," McKay said. "That is if you're going to try to simplify it down to the level of _Popular Mechanics_\--"

"Right," Sheppard said. He stretched his legs out. "See, when you're our size, gravity's important, yeah, but there's other forces, like electricity and magnetism and, oh, Van der Waals forces-- that's what makes sticky things stick-- and surface forces and things like that. And if you get even smaller, like atoms and things, there's weak force and strong force. But if the scale gets big enough, gravity's about it, really, so there'd be nothing left to do but fall. I like to fly, but I think just falling would get old after a while."

"Oh," Ford said. He thought for a moment. "You know, that actually makes sense, kind of. What's weak force and strong force mean?"

"Yes, if you don't mind the fact that it's almost *completely* *inaccurate*," McKay said testily.

"Weak force and strong force?" Sheppard leaned his head back, considering. "Well, you know about positive and negative charges? How with electricity and magnetism, opposites attract, but things that are the same push each other away?"

"Yeah, I guess," Ford said.

"Well, weak and strong forces are what keep things with the same charge together despite that. So they're what keep the nuclei of atoms from exploding apart, but they only work over really, really tiny distances, so we don't notice them, even though they're what makes matter exist. Actually, if you get really into this stuff, it turns out that weak and strong force and electricity and magnetism are really the same force, they just-- I dunno, they just use it differently. I'd say McKay could explain, except he'd probably just confuse us both. But they're what make things happen-- they're why *matter* exists the way it does. And since the good Doctor over there hasn't worked out a Grand Unified Theory yet, gravity doesn't -- fit in with the others, 'cause all it does is make things fall. The other forces, they're different, because they can make things fall *and* come back up. That's why I have no problem with being so small, relatively speaking. It's a lot more interesting if you have give-and-take both ways."

"I guess nobody would have come out on this trip, really, if they couldn't handle feeling small, huh?" Ford said.

"Oh my god, would you both be quiet, you're giving me a headache," McKay said. "And stop filling his head with inaccurate simplifications, it'll just make it harder to teach him right later."


End file.
